Kranz Communications

The fifth and last in a series of five content marketing questions any communications strategist should answer:

5. Have you created a pathway for further action?

In B2B marketing, the whole point of content is to move prospects further along the sales pipeline. But in order to create movement, you have to give prospects something to move to — a meaningful “next step” at the conclusion of every piece of content. Plan ahead. After prospects have read an article, is there a white paper or ebook they can download? When they reach your ebook’s conclusion, is there an invitation to a webinar or an online demo? Once they’ve participated in an event, is there an opportunity to speak to an expert one-on-one? Each step should mean a greater delivery of value on your part — and for the prospect, a deepening engagement with you.

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The fourth in a series of five content marketing questions any communications strategist should answer:

4. Are your tactics really worth the time?

Part of the appeal of many content tactics — such as blogging, Twitter, enewsletters — is that they’re cheap. But what they save in money they can more than make up for in TIME. This is the brutal, ugly reality too many of today’s social media and content cheerleaders rarely acknowledge. You, however, cannot afford to be so blithe. Just as you measure ROI in bottom-line dollars and cents, you have to evaluate your efforts against the time they absorb. Are the hours spent on blogging and Tweeting really drawing an audience or improving your SEO efforts? If so, great. If not, you may need to budget your time as carefully as you budget your money.

Next post: Next steps.

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The third in a series of five content marketing questions any communications strategist should answer:

3. Is your content distributed effectively?

Too often, great content is buried where prospects won’t ever find it. Please, don’t create a “resource center” on your website and expect visitors to dig through it to find relevant material — they won’t do your marketing work for you. On your site, distribute content links on pages with related subject matter. Better yet, reach beyond your site. Do the associations you belong to have sites and/or newsletters that could use your content? Have you formed friendships with bloggers who could post and/or talk about your material? What about, gasp, traditional media — are there journals or magazines that will run your stuff? Leverage the full value of your materials by being aggressive with distribution.

Next post: Time ROI.

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The second in a series of five content marketing questions any communications strategist should answer:

2. Have we really tapped all our relevant areas of expertise?

This is more easily explained by example: I have a client who runs a repair depot service for point-of-sale technologies, such as debit card readers and barcode scanners. Now, the technology is the obvious center of their know-how. But in order to fulfill their services, they’ve become experts in logistics and transportation. When gas prices peaked in 2008, they were able to capitalize on their prospects’ concerns with an ebook about reducing freight and fuel costs. It was a different spin on their usual value proposition, but it tapped a complementary area of expertise to reach customers on an issue that mattered a great deal to them. Look outside of your usual messaging: what else do you know that customers care about?

Next post: Effective distribution.

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The first in a series of five content marketing questions any communications strategist should answer:

1. Are we creating content our target market genuinely wants?

In the old push-advertising model, the desirability of our deliverable (the ad) wasn’t an issue — the audience was a captive prisoner and it was enough for our interruptions to be merely tolerable. But in a pull model intended to attract customers actively seeking information, our content must be compelling — if prospects don’t want it, they’re very free to ignore it. That’s why overt self-promotion is a no-no. Instead, our content has to either entertain or inform (or both). “Informing” is especially important for B2B marketers; our materials have to enlighten readers on new trends, show them new technologies, help them solve problems and/or achieve goals — they must be downright useful, one way or another.

Next post: Tapping all your expertise.

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Just a heads up: I have the privilege of leading a webinar next Wednesday, December 2 at the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) called, Creating Magnetic Marketing: Making content that connects with B2B and B2C customers. In the one-hour presentation, I’ll cover:

• An overview of what content marketing is and why it matters
• A survey of ten intriguing content tactics you should consider (or reconsider)
• A fool-proof technique for uncovering content opportunities
• 3D Story Telling: an easy way to frame just about any content within a compelling, attention-attracting story
• An in-depth look at one special tactic, ebooks
• A review of where and how to promote your content

If you’re a member of MENG, you can register here. If not, I’ll have to catch you another time.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

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Last Friday I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Davis and his colleagues, Brad Schwarzenbach and Scott Loring at Tippingpoint Labs in Newton, Massachusetts. With offices in a former mill building, Tippingpoint Labs is a new media enterprise in what had been an old industrial complex, one that made women’s hosiery.

If you’ve ever seen Drew in action (if not, it’s an opportunity you shouldn’t miss), you know he likes circles. Like a circus ringmaster, he likes to direct his audience’s attention to various actions and reactions within the Venn diagrams he makes, moves and manipulates.

Friday’s meeting was no different, except he improvised his circles on the spot, drawing connections and possibilities, some of which I want to share with you here:

• Too often, “social media” is narrowly conceived as being “Facebook” or “Twitter.” But as Drew correctly pointed out, it’s anywhere on the Web where your people (and your customers) are talking to each other, including review and product category support sites.
• Likewise, our thinking about “content” is too constrained. As an example, Drew used telephone support centers. After all the time the support people apply to solving a problem, their resulting solutions are wasted — there’s little to nothing in place to capture the material. But suppose you could cull the best answers to the most common problems? And then post that material to your website? Then you’d have meaningful content your customers want — and that would cut your support costs considerably.
• There are too many “echo chambers” online in which marketers are merely talking to themselves, summoning cheers for social media. But the real gains will come when we break out of our chambers and find ways of connecting our, and our customers’, voices together.
• Raw numbers, as in blog subscribers and Twitter followers, are relatively meaningless. The real name of the game is sustained relationship building, not quick hits that create temporary traffic spikes that disappear nearly as rapidly as they are formed.

There was more good stuff, but my memory fails me. Definitely check out the Tippingpoint Labs blog for additional, and ongoing, insights.

Oh, yeah, now I remember: Brad does an unbelievably funny, spot-on parody of Andy Rooney. Listen to it on their podcast, Online Parodies.

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After publishing the Content Marketing Playbook: 42 Ways to Connect with Customers, Joe Pulizzi and I were hit with a crush of requests for content strategy: given all the tactical possibilities, how do you create a manageable plan for your enterprise?

Well, we’re not ones to slouch, so we’re working on a one-day content marketing strategy workshop. Our proposition? You come for one day, you leave with a viable strategic plan you can act on immediately. It’s that simple.

Our workshop is a work in progress. But at this point, we’re examining key questions I’d like to share with you. Even just thinking about these issues will give you a leg up on competitors who are randomly pursuing tactics without any underlying plan. Here’s what’s on our minds — and should be on yours:

1. What are your content goals? Are you aiming for lead generation, lead nurturance and/or customer retention? Are you establishing thought-leadership and building communities of influence? Are you playing an elaborate SEO game? Or some combination of the above?
2. What resources do you have at your disposal? What’s your budget? Where’s your talent and expertise? Do you have real internal commitment to content? And have you audited your current content to see what should be expanded — or abandoned?
3. Who’s your audience? What do they want? What do they fear? What kinds of content do they prefer and how do they prefer to consume it? Most importantly, where do they “live” — where will they find, appreciate and share your content?
4. Which tactics are right for your enterprise? What’s the “magic mix” between your resources, audience preferences and subject matter expertise? Where should you direct your time, money and energy?
5. How will you distribute your content? Who will actively promote it? Who will share it? How do you optimize SEO? Should you use traditional marketing methods (advertising, direct mail, PR) to drive traffic or downloads?
6. How will you monitor and measure your content efforts? How will you define and quantify success? Which metrics matter — and which are irrelevant? Can you determine ROI? Bottom line: how will you know what works and what doesn’t?
7. What will it take to execute your strategy effectively? How will you designate roles and assign responsibilities? What should be accomplished in-house, what should be out-sourced? What expectations are reasonable? And how will you respond to new information as it arrives? What are your plans for corrective action?

That’s what we’re sweating. How about you? It’s not reasonable to expect you to know all the answers, but you should be exploring the possibilities. Have you and your colleagues asked the big strategic questions? Are there any we’ve missed? What answers do you want to have?

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True, search engine optimization, social media and content marketing are all Web-enabled. But so are many contemporary lead-gen tactics. No, the real significance of these three is something else:

They all conform to customer behaviors.

In one way or another, these three, interrelated marketing approaches leverage activities customers are inclined to make of their own free will, through their own initiative.

Which brings me to the debate about gating or not-gating content. As you may know, David Meerman Scott is a big advocate of open access as the way to go viral. Michael Stelzner, however, makes a compelling argument for registration as a means for capturing leads. After all, how many readers will voluntarily contact you? Not many.

I see this conflict as one between two very different business models:

The Sales-Centric Model in which marketers gather leads that are fed to salespeople who in turn move prospects along the pipeline to an eventual sale. Hopefully. This is the traditional business model, the one most of us are familiar with, the one backed by decades of experience and numerous vendors who can help us generate leads, enable sales teams and accelerate cycles. Frankly, it’s a model that works. Mostly.

The Market-Centric Model in which the business serves as the hub or host of a place, virtual or real, in which people gather to exchange information, learn new things, amuse themselves and buy things. Hopefully. This is the model SEO, SM and CM all point to. But unlike the sales-centric model, it’s a whole lot less real and more speculative. How many companies are actually doing this? Off the top of my head, two come to mind: Bottlehead for audio nuts and MyEstateManager for all of us, like it or not.

You might think that in this contest, the sales-centric model is the heavyweight champ. After all, it’s here, it’s proven, and it delivers the goods.

But there are two fundamental and inescapable facts that lead me to believe that ultimately, the market-centric model will prevail:

1. People HATE sales people. At best, they can be disguised as “advisors” or “consultants,” but even then, they’re merely a necessary evil. Let’s be honest: if you could avoid it, would you ever deal with a salesperson? Voluntarily?
2. People LOVE marketplaces. Historically, vibrant marketplaces become vital cities. And today, where do people choose to spend the larger share of their leisure time? In places where they can shop: malls, the shopping districts of cities.

This is exactly why the Web is changing everything. Before, customers had no choice; they had to deal with salespeople. But the Web has transferred power back to the customer — they deal with whom they choose to deal. SEO, social media, content marketing — they’re all different aspects of the same phenomenon: customers taking charge of how they want to buy.

I don’t think many choose to engage with a salesperson. But they will choose, they do choose, to participate in marketplaces.

What say you?

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For today’s post, I’ve invited Patsi Krakoff of Writing On the Web to contribute a few thoughts on an issue near and dear to her heart: content marketing. A true pioneer in the field, Patsi offers a welcome — and very necessary — strategic perspective on the relationship between new media content and traditional marketing objectives.

You’ve heard the buzz about content marketing. Maybe you’re not quite clear what that means for you and your business.

If you’re a small business owner, especially someone who provides services, you’re probably already writing content in order to market your professional services and products. Content marketing is just plain common sense. Or is it?

What Is Content Marketing? (And why should you care?)

Your newsletter articles, blog posts, every page on your website, photos of people in your company, what you say on Twitter & Facebook, your video clips on YouTube, podcasts, everything is considered Web content. The question is, does it do a good job of marketing for you and your business?

Some people are just hard-wired to write good content. Some hate it, but most people are resigned to the fact they must write and create content and publish on the Web if they want to get found. But what kind of content works best? What should you be writing about?

Even when a prospect has already found you, perhaps offline, most are going to research your company and your name. What will they find when they Google you?

If you’ve got any kind of business today you’re going to have to learn a few things about creating content that works for marketing on the Internet, no way around it.

I’d like to share a few principles about content marketing so you can make the right decisions for your web content, no matter what business you’re in. Your needs may be different, you may be special (I’m sure you are!) Most of the clients I sit down with for a content marketing review, are surprised by how many opportunities they’re missing for creating effective content on the Web.

Here are some general principles all professionals need to understand if they want to do business in the 21st century. The first is this:

Content Marketing Matters

Take a few minutes to focus on these 5 reasons you must publish content on the Web to grow your business.

1. People are looking for solutions to their problems on the Internet. The #1 reason people use the Internet is for entertainment, the 2nd reason is to find information. The question is, if they have a problem you can solve really well, will they find you?

2. The next question is, is your content both entertaining AND educational? Or is your idea of web content similar to a magazine ad? There’s a lot of information on the Internet, and unless you can make your messages real, interesting, human, dramatic, authentic, and honest… you’re not going to capture anyone’s attention, let alone their hearts and minds.

3. There are over 1 billion people connected to the World Wide Web. How many of them do you need to find you in order for your business to thrive? Who’s your targeted audience, who are your ideal clients? If you go after everybody, you’ll probably miss the boat and not attract anybody.

The more you can specifically attract a similar audience, and build a community, a tribe, the easier it will be to write content designed to meet their needs. Segment your sites, segment your database, and create conversations that build communities. Make it clear in the blink of an eye who your products and services are for. And start a conversation.

4. Are you visible everywhere? Do you deliver content in multiple forms, audio, visual, text, graphic images? Do you appeal to a variety of learning styles, not just with written text? Do you have content on various sites, easy to find, with consistent branding and messages? You’ll have more results if you pick several sites, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and create a consistent presence in more than one place.

5. Do you have a personality? (Or, does your content show one?) Companies, especially large ones, are finding more success with the use of personas and spokespeople because people prefer to buy from other people, not from large, anonymous brands. Small business owners can no longer afford to hide behind a fancy logo, nor should they act like a large corporation.

Every company site should dedicate pages to the people who work there. Your written content should reflect the personality of the author, rather than being anonymous company copy. Does your content build your KLT Factor (Know, Like and Trust)?

There are probably other key principles for creating good content that markets your business, and I’m probably missing some that are important for you in your niche, in your field. Feel free to let me know, leave a comment. In today’s interactive Web-world, we can continually strive to improve thanks to audience participation.

Here’s a recap:

1. Solve a problem

2. Educate and entertain

3. Build a community

4. Be visible everywhere you can

5. Be a real person

What’s missing from this list of 5 principles to strive for with content marketing for your business?

About Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D.

Patsi Krakoff is a newsletter, blog, and content marketing expert who co-founded The Blog Squad. She provides advanced training and coaching for professionals who want to beef up their blog for marketing optimization. She was trained as a journalist with a doctorate in psychology, and ten years experience online. She lived and worked in Paris 20 years and now lives in Ajijic, Mexico, where she’s an avid tennis player. Patsi’s writing her first novel about life in Paris.

Twitter: www.PatsisonTwitter.com

Blog: www.writingontheweb.com

Website: www.contentforcoachesandconsultants.com

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